Friday, August 27th, 2010

The emphasis on little neighbourhoods, the stoop, local shops and walking distances, the ‘human scale’ only tells part of the story of the city – after all, these things can be found in villages and small towns. All cities need sublimity, a touch of holy terror, a defiance of human scale that asserts connection to the greater urban whole. Elevated highways, crowds, tall buildings, interconnection and confusion – these things can be to some people dismaying and unpleasant, but the awe they strike is the overture of accepting the condition of living in a city. – Will Wiles

Top Stories

2. Parag Khanna: Beyond City Limits – “The 21st century will not be dominated by America or China, Brazil or India, but by the city. In an age that appears increasingly unmanageable, cities rather than states are becoming the islands of governance on which the future world order will be built. This new world is not — and will not be — one global village, so much as a network of different ones. ”

3. Alan Murray: The End of Management – “Corporations are bureaucracies and managers are bureaucrats. Their fundamental tendency is toward self-perpetuation. They are, almost by definition, resistant to change. They were designed and tasked, not with reinforcing market forces, but with supplanting and even resisting the market.”

4. William Strauss: Is US Manufacturing Disappearing? – “The manufacturing sector remains vibrant and innovative. Manufacturing output has been rising at a solid pace over time. Most of this growth, especially over the past 30 years, has been achieved by improving productivity. Of course, for some workers and towns, this increase in productivity has been a double-edged sword, since highly productive operations can achieve their output goals using fewer workers.”

5. Jay Green: My Quest to Live in Detroit is on the Ropes – This is an eye opening account of the difficulties Green has encountered trying to buy a home in Detroit. FannieMae continues to be a menace. I think this also goes to illustrate the problems of the poor investment climates that dog our urban cores, even in cities that are conventionally viewed as pro-business. Only the absolutely most motivated are willing to put up with this stuff. The vast majority just put urban investment in the “too hard” pile.

Railigion in Action

Light rail is the only choice for major local transportation corridor improvements, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said Thursday, while acknowledging federal requirements to study alternatives.

“I’m not afraid to say it – bus rapid transit is not acceptable,” Iorio said in an interview with The Tampa Tribune editorial board. “You tell us why Charlotte, N.C., Phoenix, Salt Lake City should have light rail and not Tampa.”

What’s interesting about this?

1. It’s again another small city mayor disparaging bus. You don’t see places like New York or Chicago doing that. In smaller cities without much in the way of transit cultures, citizens don’t have much personal experience or knowledge of transit and thus are vulnerable to demagoguery on the issue.

2. Despite Ms. Iorio’s gender, the penis-envy factor of other cities is clearly in play. Why should other places get one and not us?

3. The answer is preconceived and the alternatives analysis is a sham.

I don’t hate light rail and would support it where it make sense. But this approach of just build light rail, facts be damned only puts ammunition in the weapons of people who aren’t inclined to support any transit in the first place. And it makes you wonder if transit actually has anything at all to do with wanting to build light rail.

World and National Roundup

Rick Harrison: The Year 1959. Rick links to this amazing 1959 video describing sprawl and its problems in America in almost identical terms to those used today. Unfortunately, he did not make it embeddable. It’s from the National Association of Home Builders, so obviously has a PoV, but worth a watch anyway.

Leaving Indiana

I learned this week that Bil Browning and Jerame Davis, co-founder of the Bilerico Project, are moving to Washington, DC where Davis is taking a job with the Stonewall Democrats. I’m no brain drain believer, but in the Bilerico Project, one of America’s absolute top LGBT sites, Browning and Davis proved themselves among the city’s top internet entrepreneurs and clearly the city’s leading media entrepreneurs. As with Formspring.me, this is a big loss for the city. That’s doubly true given the way the Bilerico Project was able to broadcast a far different view of Indianapolis to the world than the one that is commonly believed out there in the world. Best of luck to Bil and Jerame in their new home.

Columbus Branding Follow-Up

After my recent Columbus branding post, someone pointed me at this Chamber of Commerce video promoting the city. (Click through if the embedded video doesn’t display). I won’t opine on it, but let you decide for yourself what you think of it.

Little Big Berlin

A great tilt-shift video of Berlin, and some of what its people are up to. And a great soundtrack too. (If the video doesn’t show for you, click here).

Post Script

Here’s a very cool 1943 picture of Chicago that was part of a photo series of full color Depression/WW-II era snaps that have been circulating around the web. Check them out on the Denver Post web site.

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Here’s another installment of my periodic postings with archive summaries on various topics. Today, looking at posts about Michigan and Ohio.

Detroit

I’ve done quite a few piece on Detroit that have proven extremely popular for whatever reason. I’d love to claim it’s because they’re brilliant, but there’s just something about Detroit that resonates with people.

The Other Side of Detroit – So much of what is written about Detroit focuses only on the bad – and there’s plenty of that there. But there’s another side to the story, and I tell it here.

Cincinnati

Cincinnati is a very under-appreciated place. It’s got its quirks, faults, and challenges to be sure – which for some people add to its charm – but also the greatest collection of assets of any city its size in America in my opinion.

A Midwest Conundrum – I talk about all those great assets, and ask why they haven’t powered the region to better performance.

The Neighborhoods of Cincinnati – A photo tour showing off some of the fantastic neighborhoods and architecture in the city. It can really shock people who aren’t ready for it.

Columbus

This capital city is one of the Midwest’s standouts in terms of demographic and economic performance. It’s a city to watch in the future. I’m putting it at the bottom since you probably saw most of these recently.

Friday, August 20th, 2010

There’s a sort of genre of urbanist creativity out there of fantasy transit maps. These are maps of transit systems that don’t exist and usually aren’t even proposed yet, but rather just express some dream of the creator, often quite epic in scope.

What I find interesting is how much better these often are than actual transit maps or proposals. I noted before how the Cincinnati streetcar people basically don’t even have a decent map of the line [now fixed]. Contrast that with this example that Columbus Underground points us at. If you click the image, you’ll get a high resolution PDF.

Now that’s a pretty slick map. It is, for locals at least, recognizably Columbus. The crisp, modern design, 45 degree angles, and relatively equidistant stations recall the famous London map and others from cities around the world. The idea being to show how Columbus could position itself among these global cities by creating a transit system. You can even buy it as a poster! A nice possible marketing tool.

People who are pushing actual transit system improvements could learn a lot from these fantasy maps. Coming up with high quality collateral that demonstrates what the end state looks like is important. And if you can make short term progress and update the map to show reality being made, even better. Transit advocates should take note.

Quick, what do you think about when you hear the words “Columbus, Ohio”? Still waiting…. And that’s the problem that civic leaders here hope to solve. This capital city in the middle of a state better known, fairly or not, for cornfields and rusting factories has a low cost of living, easy traffic and a comparatively robust economy….What Columbus does not have, to the despair of its leaders, is an image. As home to major research centers, it has long outgrown its 1960s self-concept as a cow town, and its distinction as the birthplace of the Wendy’s hamburger chain does not quite do the trick these days. The city lacks a shorthand way to sell itself — a signature like the Big Apple or an intriguing tagline like Austin’s “Live Music Capital of the World.” As a result, those working to attract new companies, top professors, conventions and tourists have a hard time explaining how Columbus differs from dozens of other cities that likewise claim to be livable, progressive and fun.

As I’ve said many times, branding isn’t marketing. It isn’t about tag lines, messaging, or talking points. Yes, there’s an element of that and getting your message out. But branding starts with what’s on the inside not messages to the outside. It’s about who you are, what your values are, what you stand for, what you aspire to be when you grow up. The marketing part just helps communicate that.

I won’t reprise my general prescription on branding, but here are a few pieces you can review if interested:

Despite what the title of the NYT piece might suggest, I think Columbus gets it on this:

How do you stoke the imagination of outsiders and the enthusiasm of residents? Columbus, starting from relative obscurity, has found that you cannot just hire an advertising agency, like New York and Las Vegas did, and come up with a slogan. It needs to find something real and heartfelt to trumpet, a task force of business, educational, political and arts leaders here concluded.

Your brand has to be something that is authentic, that’s true to the place. It has to resonate with the people who are there. That’s not to say it can’t be aspirational. That’s how we grow. But to simply chuck your past and trying to be something completely different is overwhelmingly difficult and often fails. So kudos to Columbus for trying to find something true to the character of their city.

Apparently they’ve been at this a while, and one of the techniques has been involving residents in helping to define the new brand: “But this time, three years into their inner journey, city leaders expect to succeed by drawing the whole population into the process and teasing out shared points of pride.”

When I read something like “drawing the whole population into the process”, alarm bells go off. It’s not PC to say this, but too much public involvement at the wrong stage is a bad idea. Clearly, it’s important that the public buy in and that the results be shared and genuine input solicited without delivering a fait accompli. But design by focus group almost never works. I’ve seen a lot of civic visioning efforts that tried to be maximally inclusive – I even served on the steering committee for one – but I’ve yet to see one that produced compelling results or moved the needle. Think about it. Did Steve Jobs design the iPod by asking people what they thought about music players? No he did not. Apple, and all the best product companies, succeed by giving us the thing we didn’t even know we wanted until they gave it to us.

That’s not to say you ignore market research. There’s certainly an element of archeology and anthropology here. And it certainly has to go beyond simply hiring a fancy pants advertising firm, something Columbus wisely avoided. But community involvement isn’t probably going to get it either. Partially that’s because people who are too close, who are on the inside, probably have difficulty articulating the uniqueness of a place. I don’t have enough personal experience with Columbus to go into depth there. I’d have to get more deeply embedded in the community to really understand the place at a deeper level. But I’m confident that the qualities they are looking for are there to be discovered in Columbus. The city is doing well in a tough region. There have to be reasons why. It’s going to require digging deep though.

The Fallacy of Awareness

I gather from the NYT piece that the people in Columbus think they’ve got a pretty great city, and that if they could only get other people to see how great it is, their standing in the league tables of public estimation would go way up. I believe the first part is true, but not the second.

Wanting to have your city taken seriously is likely wanting to be a member of the cool kids club. How do you get in? Well, it goes without saying that you need to have the qualifications – to be good looking, rich, to suck up to the right people, etc – but is that enough? Sometimes yes, but more often not, particularly for people who don’t score overwhelmingly high.

Think about it, the defining characteristic of a clique is exclusivity. If it was too easy to get in, membership would lose its value. So if you think about cities, the urbanists, media types, academics, activists, etc. who are the arbiters to the public at large about what cities are the coolest and best generally all pick the same ones – cliques also enforce conformity of mindset – and it just so happen that those are the places that contain most of the said taste arbiters. Why would any of them choose to champion Columbus, unless they had some personal connection there?

People who are members of an elite clique generally spend most of the time talking with and about each other, and little time about anyone else, even to put them down. To be ignored is the ultimate penalty of being an outsider. This is true of almost any field.

Here’s a classic example from the blogosphere. There was a minor kerfuffle a while back about Andrew Sullivan using “ghost bloggers.” Fellow Tier One blogger Ann Althouse took extreme umbrage at this in a way I find very revealing about the mindset of members of an exclusive clique:

I seriously believed I was interacting with Sullivan, a writer I have respected for maybe 20 years. I wouldn’t have bothered with Patrick (or Chris). I really don’t care what they think. If they insult me, they are to me like any number of bloggers who insult me and whose bait I don’t take. I would always take Sullivan’s bait, because Sullivan is important. Not to know whether it’s Sullivan or one of them makes a mush out of the whole blog.

Of course when she says Andrew Sullivan is important, what’s she’s really implying that she’s important, and can’t be bothered wasting her time on anyone who isn’t also on the VIP list. To have fooled her into debating mere peons – whose writing she admits she can’t tell from Sullivan’s himself – is treachery of the highest order.

In fairness to Althouse, she does link to lesser known bloggers (including, once, me). The point is not that she’s evil, which I don’t think, but that this is how the world really works.

If you are the Columbus, Ohio of bloggers, how do you get Ann Althouse, Andrew Sullivan, etc. to care about you? I can actually share a personal story in that regard. The first two and a half years of this blog was almost exclusively about Indianapolis, and I had very wide readership there. But I received very little recognition or acknowledgment in that city. Quite the opposite in fact. As an example, one journalist I assisted with a story told me flat out I wasn’t authoritative enough to quote in the piece. While I hope I’m getting better over time, I don’t think my content was that much less compelling then than it is today. And it was obviously being read. So why the difference? It’s the same dynamic I’m talking about. They might not have known who I was, but they knew who I wasn’t – and that was one of the boys. Quality product and awareness had nothing to do with it. Having experienced that end of the spectrum is one reason I try to be a champion for new voices.

There’s an industry out there that creates the myth or fantasy of the instant or overnight success who achieves fame and glory when their talent is finally seen by the public or the right people. Susan Boyle for example. I’m sure that does happen from time to time. But is that the way it ordinarily happens? And how much staying power does fame and recognition have in those circumstances?

I’d suggest that this sort of thing happens far less than we are generally led to believe. I read a lot of magazine profiles of people and when I hear them talk about how they got their big break, I’m always amazed at how often there are one of two basic tales. The first is, “I was sitting in my office one day wondering how we were going to pay the rent when my phone rang and it was Frank Gehry asking if I could design some lighting fixtures for his new Guggenheim Museum”. The second is, “I just showed up at Vogue and lied that I was sent there by Steven Meisel and they interviewed me and I got the job.” How likely is it that most of these stories are true? Or at least that they are the whole truth?

One of my guilty pleasures is the New York Observer. One of the things I love about it is, that due to the gossipy nature of the publication, they always give you the back story on who the people they are talking about are. That 27 year old chief curator at the top tier museum? Yeah, his mom was an heiress. He wouldn’t advertise that fact in most of those other magazine profiles. I’d bet most of these stories would fare similarly under scrutiny, though perhaps in different ways.

Clearly, awareness, and awareness by the right people, is critical. You really do have to get out there and knock on Vogue’s door – probably getting it slammed in your face the first few times you do it. Everybody needs lucky breaks. I have no doubt that if my personal promotional skills were better, I’d be further along in achieving my own ambitions.

But there’s a lot more too it than that. You want to be a member of the club? You’ve got to break the door down yourself. You’ve got to make it so that they can’t ignore you. If Columbus wants to be taken seriously, it’s going to have to force itself into the conversation. That takes relentless hard work and creating a product so compelling that the urbanist elite has to respond to it and take it seriously. Simply being a great place to raise a family, having a relatively good economy, high quality of life and low costs – a value proposition virtually identical to lots of other cities regardless of what locals might think – is not going to get the job done.

One Columbus official said, “Candidly, we believe we are one of the brightest stars in Ohio’s future.” One of the brightest stars in Ohio? I’m sorry, that’s not going to cut it. It’s like I tell the people in Indy when they get excited about being the “Diamond of the Rust Belt”: that sounds an awful lot like bragging that you won the loser’s bracket in the JV playoffs again this year. There’s nothing wrong with being in Ohio – and Columbus would be ill-advised to try to pretend they are something different from the state. Columbusites can be proud of Ohio and their role in it. But if they want America to pay attention to them, they need a message and reality to match that ambition.

That’s what Portland did. Portland didn’t get to be Portland through superior marketing and talking points about having the lowest costs and quality of life on the west coast with all those natural amenities to boot. They went out and did nothing less than define a new vision of what a small city in America could be. And they delivered on it through relentless hard work and actual execution over the course of decades.

Staking Your Claim

If Columbus wants to raise its profile, then it has to start setting the agenda. That’s not to say they have to try to be the next Portland or anything. But they’ve got to find areas where they can stake their claim and create something that compels the world to pay attention.

I’ll be the first to admit that this section will be unfair to Columbus. I’m going to compare it to its “twin city” of Indianapolis, a place I know far better. So keeping in mind that I just probably know more about what’s going on in Indy, and that I’m clearly a partisan of that city, I’d like to note a few things.

First, Columbus just seems more with it than Indy on a host of matters. In fact, when it comes to things like urban design, density, public transit, and many other matters, Indy is almost worst in class. It’s hard for me to even name one urban infill project that exhibits proper urban design, for example, while in others cities I tend to note that the majority of new developments do. Columbus, by contrast, just seems to get it on most issues, from urbanism, to pedestrian investments, etc. Yet why is Indy much better known?

One reason is that while Columbus does a very good job of ticking all the boxes, I can’t name many areas where it has gone above and beyond the checklist. And therein lies its problem. Columbus is a quality follower and implementer of the right things, but isn’t an urban innovator or a place that has carved out a distinct and compelling offering versus broadly similar peers.

A lot of people from bigger cities don’t care for Indy much. If you want walkable neighborhoods, tons of independent restaurants, etc. it is not your place. But time and again Indy has gone out and pulled things off that many other cities can only dream about, and put themselves in the spotlight.

The NYT notes of Columbus leaders, “One model they have studied is Indianapolis, which raised its profile by describing itself as the amateur athletic capital of America.” The NYT gets it completely wrong. Indy didn’t raise its profile by describing itself as anything. Back in the 1970’s a group of glum city leaders sat around a table wondering what they were going to do about a city best known, if as anything, as “India-no-place.” They hit on the idea of amateur sports. But rather than a marketing program, they instead committed themselves to going out and making it a reality, a process that continues to this day, though not limited to only amateur sports.

Indy built a downtown arena in the 1970’s. They built a domed stadium at the bargain price of only $80 million in 1983 without a team to play in it in an era before widespread pro sports franchise relocations. This let them pick the Colts up in 1984 on the cheap. Yes, that was a lucky break, but one they were ready to exploit. They put the domed stadium next to the convention center, not just to help conventions, but anticipating that major sports events would have ancillary activities that would use the co-located space. They created the first of its kind Indiana Sports Corp. to oversee all aspects of luring and hosting events. They saw the benefits of industry clustering, and recruited sporting sanctioning bodies to town, culminating with the NCAA headquarters. They started off with unglamorous events like the trials for the 1984 Olympics. They took risky bets when opportunity presented itself such as jumping in to host the 1986 Pan Am Games when the original host city backed out. They built state of the art facilities for sports few people gave much though to like swimming and bicycling.

In effect, Indianapolis created the entire industry of using sports events hosting as an economic development platform, and they did it in a holistic, extremely intelligent way that involved putting some major chips on the table for projects with an uncertain outcome. And they are still at it today, 35 years later after, as all successes do, everybody and their brother has tried to get a piece of this pie. The competition is brutal, and Indy has spent big – some say too big – to stay at the front, such as by going full out to host a Super Bowl in 2012. Indianapolis is arguably still the best place in America to host a sporting event.

I’m a believer in all the research that suggests sports investment is a bad idea with a dubious payoff for cities. But Indianapolis is an exception. There’s no doubt this was a major force in transforming the city – and getting its name out there. How much would the city have had to pay for all the de facto advertising impressions they’ve gotten from all this sports investment?

Is Columbus willing to stake a similar claim in another speculative area and put big money behind it, staying with it over the course of decades? Is Columbus ready to pile $3 billion in chips on Red 14 the way Indy did?

Indy also conceived many other similar types of programs that not only add to local quality of life, but also get the city’s name out. Consider the quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, one of the most prestigious such competitions in the world. Why would anyone take seriously a fine arts competition in Indianapolis? Well, they wouldn’t, all things being equal. So when the city did it, they had to come up with an unbeatable package. First, they partnered with the world-renowned Indiana University School of Music to give them musical credibility. And they set up for the winner a year’s loan of a Stradivarius violin, a recital at Carnegie Hall and other places, intense coaching from some of the world’s best violinists, and more. That certainly got people’s attention.

Or consider the Indianapolis Prize for animal conservation. Again, why would anyone think of Indianapolis in this field? They wouldn’t – except that they city anted up and made it the single biggest cash prize in this field in the world and recruited a top international nominating committee and jury.

Or look at the currently in progress Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which is taking over 8 miles of downtown street lanes away from cars and giving them to people. It is a unique project, that includes the highest quality bicycle boulevard I’ve seen, along with an often separate pedestrian walkway, significant green features, and major public art installations. While honestly this has not received the publicity it deserves, it has been covered in Surface, Dwell, Streetsblog, and elsewhere. It’s a totally unique project. From now on anyone who wants to undertake a major downtown urban trail project is going to go to Indianapolis to see what it did. Why? Not because they want to, but because they have to. Because at some point somebody is going to ask the question, did you look at the Indy Cultural Trail? – and if they development team says No, they are going to look pretty stupid.

I’ve also noted how suburban Carmel, Indiana is staking out a claim to be a nationally premier suburb, with 5% of all the modern roundabouts in the United States, the largest deployment of roundabout interchanges in the United States, an ambitious agenda of New Urbanist retrofit, a $150M concert hall, and much more.

You might not know any or all of these, but in their fields, they are known. They are all projects of major ambitions, that attempt to innovate and set the agenda, and which serve a branding function for the city. They were also conceived with a recognition that nobody is going to pay attention to Indianapolis unless the city forces them to. And it has. And it’s not just in the traditional civic sphere. Here’s a point to ponder: with Columbus’ vaunted gay community, why is it Indianapolis that is home to the Bilerico Project, the Huffington Post of the LGBT community?

I could go on and on – best airport in the United States, anyone? – but I think you get the point. Indy isn’t in the club yet, and may never get there – but it has come a long way.

Again, if I knew Columbus better, I’d probably be able to give examples there too. I’m sure Columbus isn’t totally without these types of programs. But my blog has been traditionally Midwest focused. And I’ve tried to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in all these cities, including Columbus. I read the Dispatch online for over two years and still read Columbus Underground regularly. But I haven’t come across that many truly compelling stories of national relevance – and certainly nowhere near as many as I’d expect for a city that’s rocking and rolling as much as Columbus is.

Maybe the painful truth is that Columbus today just isn’t very different from the other places with which it competes – and that’s what this re-branding should really address.

Columbus has most of the blocking and tackling nailed. It’s a city that gets it. But to break through at the national level, Columbus is going to have to do a lot more than get it. Columbus is going to have to start playing offense, start dictating an ambitious – and let’s face it, risky – agenda around items that are so compelling the world won’t have any choice but to sit up and pay attention. Because it’s unlikely anybody is going to start giving Columbus the props it craves otherwise. It’s just like they told me at my old firm about the secret to making partner – you’ve got to already more than be there.

Friday, August 6th, 2010

[ I recently wrote about Columbus, Indiana, but I haven’t forgotten about Columbus, Ohio. That city is undertaking a major rebranding effort I’ll comment on in the next week or so. But before getting to that, I’ll share again my overview of this under the radar and under-appreciated city that is coming on strong – Aaron. ]

Columbus, Ohio is by far the best performing city in Ohio. In a state that has become a byword for the challenges and pain of de-industrialization, Columbus is a clear standout, with strong economic and population growth.

A lot of the analysis of what makes Columbus different from Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Youngstown, and even Cincinnati often starts out by noting all the advantages Columbus had. It is the state capital. Ohio State University is there. It was not a traditional heavy manufacturing center (less true than you might think), and so did not have that legacy to overcome.

But what strikes me about Columbus is not all the advantages it has, but rather the handicaps it has when compared to other Midwestern standouts like the Twin Cities:

The Columbus metro area has only 15% of the state’s population, and thus does not form a significant voting block in the state house. Compare to say the Twin Cities or Chicago.

It is one of three major cities in Ohio (Cleveland and Cincinnati being the others), and is the smallest of them. There are also a number of mid-sized cities like Toledo, Youngstown, and Dayton. This makes Ohio an urban-friendly state, but also makes the competition for state resources intense. There is no other Midwestern state with anything like this.

Cincinnati and Cleveland both came of age early and were giants of their ages, which endowed them with an incredible built environment legacy and many absolute top quality high culture institutions. Since Columbus lagged, and since Ohio already had these things through Cincy and Cleveland, Columbus is comparatively lacking in both regards. It is especially notable that Columbus’ high culture institutions are very weak compared to most Midwestern cities.

Columbus does not have any of the top three professional sports team, again, probably because of the Cincy/Cleveland factor. People who think pro sports are overly key to urban success have to be able to explain away the Columbus example. It does have NHL and MLS franchises.

Columbus has a comparatively weak central business district. It has the typical office buildings and such to be sure. But its downtown mall, City Center, is closed and will be demolished. It is not a major convention destination. Nor is downtown a major entertainment district for the city.

So you can see that there are a number of structural weaknesses working against Columbus. But the one that I really think is the kicker is the name “Columbus” itself. It is just very generic and has no brand recognition. Columbus is probably the biggest city in America where the state is almost always given along with the city, i.e., “Columbus, Ohio” versus “Cincinnati”. Say Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis and by themselves people know where you are talking about at at least something about it. But say Columbus and people probably think of a town named Columbus in their own state, like Columbus, Indiana or Columbus, Georgia. This is one area the lack of pro sports probably hurts the city badly, since cities with major league franchises are constantly getting their name on TV. (I have long endorsed viewing pro sports subsidies as basically a naming rights sponsorship, where the city pays to put its name on the team for marketing exposure. How much would it cost to buy all those TV impressions? A lot more than the cost of the team.) Heck, type “Columbus” into Wikipedia and you get back a disambiguation page.

In addition to just having a generic name shared with cities in various states, there is really nothing that would put Columbus on the mental map of the world. Louisville has the Kentucky Derby. No matter what else people may or may not know about Louisville, everyone knows the Derby and that it is in Louisville. It’s a similar story for the Indianapolis 500. But Columbus? Nothing.

I caused some pain for myself on a Columbus message board by suggesting that outside the United States, especially in Europe, Columbus, Indiana probably has better brand recognition than Columbus, Ohio and that among a certain social set if you just said, “Columbus”, the Indiana town is what would come to mind. This is because Columbus, Indiana has one of the world’s most important collections of modernist architecture by a who’s who of key architects. (It is an absolute must visit, incidentally, and be sure to sign up for the bus tour at the visitor’s center). It has an international reputation for this.

So I think in looking at Columbus, you need to be able to see its success in terms of the big headwinds the city faces in some respects. This renders its performance all the more impressive. Consider:

The Columbus metro population is growing at a rate of 1.1% per year, which exceeds the national average. It is the second fastest growing large city in the Midwest after Indianapolis. What’s more, its growth held steady last year in a time when most cities suffered declining performance. Indy’s growth rate has eroded the last two years running, so if trends continue, Columbus will be #1 in short order. The Columbus region is adding people at a healthy run rate of 200,000 per decade.

Columbus has net in-migration, including the rarity of domestic in-migration.

Columbus has been adding jobs at one of the strongest rates in the Midwest. While its economy has taken a hit recently like all others, it has held up much better than the Midwest. Its unemployment rate of 8.1% compares favorably to other traditionally strong Midwest economies like Indianapolis (8.7%), Minneapolis (8.4%) and Kansas City (8.2%)

Columbus’ economy is powered by many of the same things that have led other Midwest peer cities. Columbus has a very low cost of living, an increasing array of urban amenities, and very high quality of life with regards to such measures as traffic congestion. It does also have the benefit of Ohio State University, the largest university campus in the country, which has the effect of almost making Columbus America’s biggest college town. Normally a school wouldn’t make as big a splash in a city this size, but OSU is so huge, it does. This has many positive impacts such as skewing the population younger, driving international migration, increasing college degree attainment rates, and enabling research oriented spinoffs. (It probably does act as a drag on labor force as a percentage of population, however).

Columbus also seems to have benefited from longstanding enlightened leadership. Back in the 1950’s or so, one of their mayors made a key decision. He refused to extend water service to places that did not agree to be annexed. Thus Columbus was able to expand geographically where most Midwestern cities got hemmed in. So while it does not have a city-county merger in effect, Columbus takes up a huge amount of the county, with a population in the city proper of over 700,000 people. Ohio has very favorable annexation laws for cities that control utilities. If you get utility service from a city, you can’t stop them from annexing you – and you can annex across county lines, something that Columbus has already done. While it now does have cities like Dublin ringing it in some respects, there seems to be a recognition that there needs to be room for the city to continue to grow, and from what I’ve seen, annexation boundary agreements with suburbs continue to provide more or less unlimited possibilities for Columbus to continue expanding.

The corporate community is robust and engaged. Columbus seems to have a very strong economic development mindset, and a pro-business attitude. The local corporate community has been very active in things like the development of the Arena District, and has pumped a lot of money into the downtown. There can be complaints, probably with some degree of legitimacy, that development policies are overly corporate driven, but this is true everywhere. Columbus has also notably maintained a large white collar work force.

The government and citizen base seems to be supportive of fairly progressive public policies. I noted recently how citizens of the city have routinely voted for bond levies to fund various civic improvements. Even in this recession, there was just a vote for a levy that is partially to maintain operations, but also partially to expand the parks. Like many cities, Columbus has a lot of overgrown country roads that haven’t been upgraded, but it is trying. Last year Columbus spend $50 million on adding new sidewalks, for example. There have been other bond issues and many of them are focused on things like sidewalks and other projects to improve the quality of the overall city’s general infrastructure, not a handful of splashy mega-projects. As I’ve long said, the mark of a great city is in how it treats its ordinary spaces, not its special ones. Every small town in America makes its Main Street look nice. But the ordinary street is much more important. Columbus seems to get that.

The one thing that has failed in Columbus is light rail. It was voted down. Actually, I think that’s probably a good thing since while improved transit is certainly needed there, a very expensive light rail system probably isn’t a fit for Columbus.

Columbus, like most cities, has an urban core that has many challenges. There are a lot of areas of the old city of Columbus that are as decayed as any other place. But Columbus also has a lot of urban gems in its central city as well. German Village is one of the top historic districts in the United States. It is truly incredible and a must visit. While the downtown isn’t that exciting, areas like the Short North and the entire continuous strip of urbanized development north along High St. through the University campus up to Worthington is impressive. There are a number of smaller Franklin County suburbs that are super-cool “old school old money” type places in their appearnce. Newer places like Dublin are starting to turn it on.

So what does Columbus need to do moving forward?

1. It needs to strengthen its brand. I wrote a lot about strengthening the brand of Indianapolis in this blog, but that city is one I know intimately. I don’t know Columbus well enough to judge what its essential character might be yet, but ultimately a real brand image needs to spring from the native soil. Columbus can’t be a world class city unless it is a world class Columbus. Great cities, like great wines, have to express their terroir. Trying to graft coolness onto a place apart from its essential character only looks pathetic. I think Columbus is still stuck in a insecure phase where it is engaging in braggadocio to make itself seem like it is one of the cool upperclassmen. The best example here is the city calling itself “The Indie Arts Capital of the World”. There is actually some goodness in this. I noted the city’s relatively weak high culture institutions, so focusing on indie arts makes sense. But is this brand likely to play in Chicago? I don’t think so. Nor do I think it works as a aspirational statement since it seems at odds with local character and difficult to achieve. This won’t be easy. The name Columbus itself is a bit of a millstone as I noted. But I think it can be done. It’s going to take a lot of digging deep and working hard, and finding an inner confidence in what Columbus is as a city.

2. Infrastructure is a problem. Columbus is growing and needs to expand its infrastructure to keep up and also improve and maintain its legacy infrastructure. The problem is that key portions of Columbus’ legacy infrastructure require very expensive upgrades that will likely suck up all available funds. This will hurt it if something creative isn’t found. For example, ODOT is going to spend over a billion dollars reconstructing part of the inner loop downtown. That is desperately needed since the road is unsafe, but is unlikely to add to Columbus’ competitive advantage as a city. And that’s a billion that can’t be spent on other things. Some locals want to put caps on the freeway to mitigate the “noose effect” it has on downtown. These are very expensive and have been considered too costly to include. This ought to be reconsidered. Yes, it won’t be cheap. But cutting out every “value added” element from a project to keep the cost down means you could ultimately end up with still an ultra-expensive project, but one that has little real boost for the city. If you’ve got lemons, you need to make lemonade. If you’re going to hold your nose and fix a problem like this, you might as well pinch a little harder and do the job right so that you get some actual value out of it.

3. Improve the quality of urban design. Columbus isn’t bad, but its built environment is rather generic. It needs to improve the quality of its architecture and public space, and what’s more use design as a way of expressing its brand. This is a huge opportunity area for cities like Columbus to create a differentiated physical environment at modest incremental cost. It seems to be something that doesn’t register with people, however. Indianapolis, as I’ve noted, has some simply superb examples of design in a handful of locations – but refuses to do anything with them. I am utterly befuddled by this. Even Chicago is backsliding on this front. It’s a big opportunity area for Columbus.

4. Tune-up the economic development engine. Columbus is doing well here – it’s hard to argue with the results. But I think a pro-active scan to find some specific niches where Columbus can create sustainable competitive advantage and get the benefits of being a first mover are would be good to do. I think the future is about micro-clusters made up of many small and medium sized businesses that in aggregate will add up to what say a single major HQ or factory might have had. Only looking at general mega-clustures like life sciences is not enough. Also, OSU brings huge numbers of outsiders to the area for four years. They probably had a great time. How can the city turn the OSU university alumni network into an urban alumni network?

On the whole, I think Columbus is rocking and rolling. Because of its weak name recognition and the fact that it is in Ohio, I think it flies almost completely under the radar. But this an impressive city and one that is arguably the best positioned of any Midwestern metro to really prosper in the 21st century economy. For those of you who haven’t been to Columbus, I strongly suggest a visit. This is not a Cincinnati or Chicago like place where you will be immediately wowed by the coolness of the built environment. But I think it will surprise you nevertheless. Before you go, drop by Columbus Underground and let the crew there tell you what you ought to see and do.

I don’t have pictures of all of the cool areas of Columbus, but here are a few samples for you.

Some scenes from German Village.

Here are some shots from the core of downtown. First the Ohio State House. Yup, no dome.

City Hall (I think)

Moving a bit north to the Arena District. I like to call this Columbus’ “Downtown 2.0″. They got it wrong bigtime the first time around by trying to spread major projects like City Center Mall around in order to act as anchors. The right approach is clustering multiple types of uses in a single district, which the city did right in the Arena District.

The downtown arena is named for Nationwide Insurance, which is the prime mover behind much of the downtown redevelopment.

The Columbus Convention Center. I’m not sold on the architecture, frankly, though they made an effort to do something other than the standard box.

Restaurants in the vicinity.

The Hyatt Regency Hotel. I’ve always thought buildings like this have a bit of an Orwellian aura about them. It looks like some Eastern Bloc country’s defense department.

Moving along to the north, we get to to a neighborhood called the Short North. The one photo I have of it in my archives doesn’t do it justice. Lots of arts related businesses here.

One of those old moneyesque suburbs I mentioned is Worthington in northern Franklin County. Here are a couple snaps.

The main street in north suburban Delaware, the eponymous county seat of the fast growing county in Ohio.

Here are thoughts on branding from Indianapolis that are relevant to Columbus, as well as a concept brand positioning for Louisville:

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

This is the first in a short series of posts on the downsides of city-county consolidation. Actually, it might better be described as a discussion of some of the pros and cons of “big box” vs. “small box” municipal government. It is similar to business. It seems like every large business is either doing one of two things: centralizing or decentralizing. There’s a sort of cycle of reincarnation about this. Every model has its flaws, and people tend to gravitate towards the other side of the spectrum from time to time when the problems of the current mode manifest themselves in a particularly severe form. As a prologue to this, you might want to read my previous examination of city-county consolidation post, if you haven’t already.

I haven’t read all the academic literature on city-county consolidations, so won’t make any strong claims about the benefits its promoters have touted. But I will make two observations. One, I’m not aware of any city that has gone through a city-county consolidation that has become a civic failure, or which has a severely under-performing region. Most of the ones I’m familiar with seem to be doing ok or better. Two, if you look at the Midwest region, the metros that are doing well almost all feature a core city that either underwent a consolidation or has managed to maintain its ability to annex new territory. Minneapolis-St. Paul is an exception, but it has regional revenue sharing. (Landlocked and unconsolidated Chicago has a thriving core, but the regional numbers are lagging). So my gut tells me that big box solutions at a minimum don’t hurt and probably have some benefit to a region.

But they do come with downsides, and one of them is that it can make neighborhood redevelopment more difficult. The root of the problem is that with a single city covering a large area, there is only one mayor, one city council, etc. These have a large area to concern themselves with and cannot physically devote significant time and attention to each neighborhood. They inevitably spend most of their time dealing with the biggest and most visible challenges, which often means downtown development issues.

Redevelopment in Indianapolis

Indianapolis is a good example of this principle in action. It underwent a city-county consolidation in 1970. Four smaller municipalities were excluded from merger and so are known as “excluded cities”. So we get here both consolidated neighborhoods and some unconsolidated ones we can compare.

Since 1970, downtown Indianapolis has experienced a major resurgence. And Indy has emerged as what is in many ways the strongest performing Midwest metro area. I happen to believe its consolidation was instrumental in setting the stage for that. Many of its urban neighborhood have seen challenges, however. This includes many reasonably upscale areas, and I’d like to highlight two of them.

The first is an area centered around 71st and Binford Blvd on the northeast side. It was an established suburban area annexed under consolidation that started experiencing problems recently, notably with decay in its commercial developments, a common concern in aging suburbs. The population was also aging and not being renewed. This prompted a local woman to found a new neighborhood group called Binford Redevelopment and Growth (BRAG) to try to change the situation. BRAG wants more urban, mixed use development anchored by a transit stop on a future rail line, infrastructure upgrades to add basics like sidewalks that are missing in the area, and help redeveloping the commercial districts. They’ve had some successes, notably attracting investment in local strip centers, with a new Starbucks, CVS, and Kroger. But there has been little city investment.

The other is Midtown, an area encompassing the historically most desirable urban neighborhoods in the city. It includes the Meridian St. mansion district, Butler University, and Broad Ripple, the city’s main bar district. This area is loaded with gorgeous 1920’s era architecture and many independent shops and restaurants. But this area too started to experience problems, with vacant houses, some struggling commercial nodes, increasing crime, a property tax spike, and deteriorating infrastructure.

A group of neighbors here also formed a group called HARMONI designed to change this. They are also promoting neighborhood infrastructure investment, more urban development, etc. As part of this they purchased copies of Suburban Nation and distributed it to all regional elected officials. They even secured pledges of private funding for some infrastructure improvements. However, there has been little city investment in Midtown either.

But turn to the excluded cities and see a different pattern. Lawrence, the largest, inherited part of a closed military base. They created a commission to repurpose this into a new town center area. This included a multi-million dollar extension of 56th St, which involved building a bridge over a double-tracked rail line. That project also featured high quality streetscape treatments along its length. Former officers quarters on the base were renovated, and many other townhomes and other residences built. And there has been significant new commercial development as well, such that this area appears as nice and thriving as any edge suburb in the region.

As the name suggests, Speedway is the home of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is also an older industrial suburb, with gridiron streets and its own Main St. The town really never leveraged the track outside of race days. The Main St. had businesses but was struggling, and the town was at best stagnant. However, the town council has taken on a major redevelopment program that will involve a major street reconfiguration and significant commercial oriented development designed to turn Speedway into a year round tourist destination and hub of motorsports themed businesses. It’s a $500 million plan, and while not much has happened yet, the town is getting ready to issue bonds to finance millions of dollars in road improvements.

A third of the four excluded cities, Beech Grove, is also improving its town center, and has already spent millions rebuilding its main gateway street, Emerson Ave.

So three of the four Indianapolis excluded cities have active town center renewal programs, while the two annexed neighborhoods, even though more upscale than the excluded cities in many ways, have seen little tangible city investment. Why is that?

The excluded cities have their own city governments. So they have elected officials whose sole focus is their own community. They’ve also got the legal powers, such a the ability to create their own tax increment financing districts, that let them control their own destiny without regards to a higher authority.

The annexed areas, by contrast, only have neighborhood groups. These groups have no power to do anything except lobby the main Indianapolis city government. This city government has to cover a huge area and is besieged with many groups wanting things. The mayor has an incredibly limited ability to deal with individual neighborhood issues. For example, he does a monthly “Mayor’s Night Out” in which he visits each township in turn, a different one each month, to answer citizen questions along with his senior staff. But there are nine townships, each one of which would rank among Indiana’s largest cities by itself. And that doesn’t even get to the neighborhood level.

It should come as no surprise that progress is slow. For example, there’s a proposal in the Midtown area at 49th and College Ave. called (interestingly) “The Uptown”. This would replace an old gas station, another vacant commercial structure, and a few single family homes with a three story, multi-use building featuring 75 apartments and storefront retail. It is exactly what the neighborhood needs. It’s a rare example of approved upzoning for density in Indianapolis. And from an urban design standpoint it is the best designed structure Indianapolis has seen in the modern era. Here’s the present view of the site:

The project needs tax assistance to ever get built, but it is looking like it won’t as the project has been on hold for well over a year. If the Uptown were in one of the excluded cities or in an actual suburb, it is almost inconceivable that it wouldn’t get built. The local government would find a way to make it happen. But Indianapolis has higher priorities. For example, a major civic focus is a project on the near East Side in conjunction with hosting the Superbowl. That’s the sort of major event that consumes management time and attention in a large city.

This is not to criticize the mayor. In fact, people from both BRAG and HARMONI have told me the city is very willing to engage with them and that the mayor has been supportive. The problem is structural. No mayor could physically deal with the demand. It’s inherent in the very nature of a large, big box government. It seems likely to occur in any consolidated government or very large city without sub-city level authorities with real powers.

It was before my time, but reportedly Bill Hudnut, a previous mayor, saw this problem and wanted to create more neighborhood level structures in a system he called Minigov (versus “Unigov”, as the consolidated government is known). But that never happened.

Midtown vs. Bexley

Another interesting comparison is the Midtown area of Indianapolis with the suburb of Bexley in Columbus, Ohio. Bexley is more or less exactly the same as Midtown with the exception that it is a separate municipality, though one that is completely surrounded by the city of Columbus. American Dirt ran very interesting profile of Bexley you might want to check out.

Bexley remains a thriving city, especially in contrast with the surrounding areas of Columbus. Its streets largely have up to date infrastructure, including full sidewalks, which Columbus often doesn’t. It has maintained thriving commercial districts, and has had more intense urban infill as well, as this picture will attest:

Photo courtesy Jung Won Kim.

Why the difference vs. Midtown Indianapolis? Well, the fact that Bexley gets to have its own city school district while Midtown is part of the stigmatized Indianapolis Public Schools no doubt has something to do with it. This keeps land prices high, which preserves a largely affluent and exclusive resident base. This has pros and cons. Of course it means the city can be kept nicer. But it also denies the experience of that to those who can’t buy in. And the overall regional tax base misses out on one of its most affluent areas. This is the problem of all upscale suburbs. Midtown, Indianapolis, whatever its faults, has many well-off homeowners who pay significant money towards the broader community, including the city schools. And it is a much more mixed income area.

Bexley also has its own municipal authority, while Midtown does not, with the implications discussed above.

But another thing occurs to me. Because Midtown is part of a much larger city, it suffers from the problem of a diffusion of responsibility. That is, it can assume the rest of the city will carry the load in some respects. This manifests itself in a strong anti-development NIMBY contingent that is opposed to urbanization. Any proposed development of any kind is greeted by wailing and teeth-gnashing by opponents, who’ve been known to do things like pull their kids out of school to serve as props at mid-day zoning hearings where commissioners are told neighborhood kids will literally die if new apartments are approved.

I don’t know what the sentiment is in Bexley, but they’ve certainly implemented more actual urbanization than Midtown. I suspect one reason is that Bexley knows it has only its own tax base to rely on. If its residents want to keep quality schools, they can either approve more commercial and intense development, or watch their residential property taxes go up significantly over time. That focuses the mind wonderfully.

So I also hypothesize that in addition to making redevelopment more difficult for reasons of the structure of government, big box government also inculcates an anti-development mindset to a greater degree than small box government.

The Chicago Ward System

So how do you deal with this? Chicago is a big box government that has solved the governance problem with a ward system. There are 50 city council members, who more or less are the gods of their ward as a result of a system called aldermanic privilege. This is where the alderman basically agree they will let each other do whatever they want as long as it is in their own ward. Various city agencies also more or less defer to the alderman on almost any decision to do anything. This results in a system where the mayor deals with the big issues of the city and major developments, while the aldermen deal with neighborhood issues.

The Chicago system has maintained many strong neighborhoods in the city, but it has its downsides. Aldermen have virtually unlimited authority in their wards, making it a sort of elected dictatorship. So it should come as no surprise that corruption has been rampant. In excess of 40 alderman have gone to jail for corruption in the last three decades, an astonishing rate. This also makes things like planning difficult, and creates a climate of great political uncertainty around development.

The Chicago system is a de facto one, not based on a city charter or anything like that. It would be interesting to see how it developed. But it does show that you don’t necessarily need constitutional change to effect small box government inside of a big one.

Jane Jacobs and District Governance

Jane Jacobs saw this problem of big box government very clearly and dedicated an entire chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities to it. (Chapter 21, Governing and Planning Districts). This is not one of the chapters that generally gets a lot of attention these days, and that’s a shame. She says:

The historical changes relevant in this case are not only an immense increase in the size of great cities, but also the immensely increased responsibilities….which have been taken on by the governments of great municipalities. New York is not unique in failing to match such profound changes in circumstances with appropriate functional changes in administrative and planning structure.

I can’t do this chapter justice here, but it is a must read. Her basic solution is that all city agencies – police, fire, planning, parks, etc) would be organized around districts (neighborhood groupings), with contiguous borders, with service delivery coordinated between them and with the input of the neighborhood. Chicago’s ward system is similar to this, with the notable exception of having a district dictator. That might be a cautionary tale about what this sort of thing can turn into.

Implication for Small Box Cities

To me this implies that cities which retain a relatively small and governable core along with a plethora of unconsolidated suburbs might be in an advantageous position from a redevelopment perspective. Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh come to mind. Their many separate towns in the core county have the independent power they need to take matters into their own hands if they so desire. And the core city itself should be small enough to enable more fine grained governance from city hall.

On the downside, it seems almost inevitable that many of these unconsolidated suburbs will turn into complete failed cities, often left ignored and forgotten. There are plenty of beyond dysfunctional suburbs in Chicago just like this. I presume it is similar in places like Pittsburgh. I think it is notable that consolidated cities like Indianapolis and Nashville don’t have any truly failed suburbs. Another benefit of the big box city.

Summing it Up

I think the lesson here is that there are always, always trade offs to be made in governance. The trick is to understand the trade-offs you are making and take steps to try to mitigate the inherent problems with the model your city and region operate in.

Based on this and the previous post, we might say at high level that for big box government, the pros are stronger civic consensus and cohesion, generally stronger regional and downtown growth, a fairer tax base, and a general lack of totally failed central cities and suburbs. The cons are a weaker city neighborhoods, redevelopment challenges outside of downtown, weaker urban identity, and lower quality development.

For small box government is is basically the inverse of this. The pros are a strong central city & urban identity, higher quality development, more redevelopment opportunities. The downsides are civic fragmentation and lack of consensus, the potential for a failed central city, some failed suburbs, and possibly weaker downtown growth.

Friday, December 11th, 2009

The Good News

I thought I would lead off a few pieces of very good recent news.

First, Louise Nippert donated $85 million to Cincinnati arts groups. $75 million of this goes to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, making it the largest gift in that institution’s history and one of the largest to any orchestra anywhere.

Also, the Indianapolis Regional Center Design Guidelines won the 2010 National Planning Excellence Award for a Best Practice from the American Planning Association. Columbus, Ohio won in the Best Practice for Implementation category for its University District revitalization. And Chicago won in the Outreach category for its Wicker Park Bucktown Master Plan. The APA web site has the full list of winners.

Ideas For Cities

Back in September at Velocity Grand Rapids, an energetic bunch of urban enthusiasts came up with a collection of ideas for cities. I participated and previously shared some of the thinking this event stimulated in me. Recently, GOOD Magazine started blogging a huge collection of ideas that were captured from that event. It is called Ideas for Cities and is worth checking out. You won’t agree with all of them, I’m sure, but you are sure to find some good things on the list as well.

It’s Not a Race – But What If It Were?

I don’t know the original source of this video but I found it via Human Transit. It shows the progress of rail line construction in various cities over time. On your mark, get set…

2010 Housing Outlook

Pittsburgh’s Chris Briem pointed me at this Fortune magazine housing outlook for 2010. Pittsburgh happens to be the only market projected positive for 2010, though several markets turn positive in 2011. Here’s the Midwest cities from the list. The rank is in order of best to worst housing markets for the top 100 metros.

#1 – Pittsburgh: +0.41%

#7 – Kansas City: -1.81%

#8 – Louisville: -2.24%

#12 – St. Louis: -2.39%

#24 – Indianapolis: -3.23%

#30 – Milwaukee: -3.92%

#34 – Chicago: -4.30%

#40 – Minneapolis: -4.99%

#50 – Columbus: -6.54%

#51 – Cleveland: -6.98%

#57 – Cincinnati: -8.30%

#65 – Detroit: -9.40%

A Tsunami of Freight

The Cincinnati Enquirer has a great series of articles on increasing truck traffic in the region and insufficient investment in roads to keep up with it. I-75 is now the busiest north-south trucking route in the US, and 47,500 trucks per day pass through Cincinnati.

I know there are a lot of people out there that are anti-highway. But a lot of the arguments around it relate to local land use and development patterns and ignores freight. Clearly, rail freight and intermodal transport are growing at a rapid clip and need investment. But trucking is always going to be a very important part of our national economy and keeping freight moving on a national and regional level is critical. For a big rig, every hour of delay costs about $67 – that adds up quickly.

I support transit development but also believe we need highway investment. With almost every Midwest city and state saying distribution and logistics are going to be a big part of its economy, highway investment is even more critical. If your region has big time congestion and roads with obsolete dimensions, that’s dramatically going to hurt your business climate for transport intensive industries. The cities that figure out how to make this investment are going to distinguish themselves.

One of the things I said I was going to do when I started this blog was call them like I see them, and for this I know I part ways with many. We absolutely need major highway investment in our cities. Do we need transit investment as well? Absolutely. I believe they are actually complementary, not substitutes. Transit works well were highways don’t and vice versa. We need to complement urbanized cores with transit appropriate development patterns with strong regional and national highway networks. It’s a matter of AND not OR.

World and National Roundup

I want to highlight two long but fascinating and troubling articles about international cities. The first is The Dark Side of Dubai from the Independent (UK). (via @a_me1). It is an incredible peek behind the glittering facade of this Middle Eastern Oz.

The other is a piece in the Observer (UK) on Rio’s drug war. This piece is another example of why the Guardian/Observer is the best newspaper in the world.

PD Smith has an opinion piece in Wired UK proposing to use taxation to get people back into cities over there. You wouldn’t have to tax me to get me to move to London! Just offer me a job. It might be my favorite city in the world.

NYT: Trouble in Philly, Lessons in New York. There’s a backlash against bicycling in Philadelphia after bicyclists killed two pedestrians. It would be tempting to just bash cars more here, but biking advocates need to address the legitimate concerns about how biking affects pedestrians. Clearly there is an element of the biking community, albeit a minority, that rides rudely and hazardously. We need to educate and encourage bikers to share the road with pedestrians just as we do the same with drivers.

Kaid Benfield: Texas (!) becomes first state to adopt smart streets rule. I’m not as surprised as he is. With that Texas attitude, when they think they are behind on something, they make a point to catch up, which is why Texas actually bests almost the entire Midwest on most measures of urban progressivism.

Ohio Faces ‘Mobility Crisis’

Urban Cincy highlighted a study that talked about the precipitous decline of transportation option other than automobiles in Ohio. He’s got all the details you should definitely check out, but I wanted to share the maps of non-auto transportation links in Ohio in 1979 vs. 2009.

First 1979:

Now 2009:

Policing Levels

Urban Cincy has a another great piece, this one on police staffing levels in Cincinnati It’s an interesting and provocative analysis in an area in which the discourse is dominated by a political culture in which no one wants to appear soft on crime.

He had a great chart of police officers per capita for Midwest cities. Here is the research, in terms of police per 100,000 residents in the year 2000:

Cleveland: 381

Milwaukee: 335

Pittsburgh: 310

Cincinnati: 307 (2010 data pro forma with planned reductions)

Kansas City: 284

Louisville: 269

Columbus: 245

Minneapolis: 236

Toledo: 220

Indianapolis: 207

Portland: 190

Names and Identity

The New York Times had a great piece Sunday called “Vancouver Talks Tough to Itself“. That’s Vancouver, Washington. One of the key focus areas of the article is how sharing a name with Vancouver, British Columbia kills their brand recognition. One local even created a shirt saying, “Vancouver (not B.C.), Washington (not D.C.), Clark County (not Nevada), near Portland, Oregon (not Maine)”.

The town is actually considering the step of renaming itself back to its original moniker of Fort Vancouver in an attempt to eliminate the confusion.

This story made me immediately think of Columbus, Ohio. It’s another city that struggles under the weight of a fairly generic name. It’s not that it is overshadowed by a more famous or bigger Columbus, but rather that Columbus is simply a common name for cities in America (Columbus, Indiana; Columbus, Georgia) and that the word Columbus to many people means the Columbus in their own state. Also, until recently Columbus was in the shadow of Cleveland and Cincinnati, so didn’t have longstanding historic recognition. It is probably the biggest city in America where you always have to give the state, not just the city name – Columbus, Ohio. It is probably the largest city out there where a Wikipedia search on its name takes you to a disambiguation page.

It prompts an interesting question: should Columbus change its name? That would be a radical step for sure, one fraught with danger. But also a potential game changer for the city. Just the act of doing so would generate huge press. If I were them I would consider it except that such exercises are inherently so difficult, as most corporate branding initiatives show. I lived through the transition from Andersen Consulting to Accenture. So I know that finding a good name is problematic, and even the best of names sounds stupid when you first hear it. (I think Accenture did one of the better jobs out there). Would anyone pick, for example, Chicago as a city name today? No. The name has meaning because of the history and what it represents. So even the coolest of names would take a long time to “break in” so to speak. If someone really did come up with a great name though, it would be something to debate.

Cincinnati Agenda 360

The Cincinnati Enquirer did a major feature on Agenda 360 last week. Agenda 360 is the region’s strategic plan for the future, focused around raising the number of young people with college degrees, adding jobs, and more.

As the piece notes, however, the goals seem unattainable in the target timeframe, especially with the recession. The Agenda 360 organization is still thinking big, however. According to executive director Myrita Craig, “We wanted to aspire to not just an incremental increase, but to a quantum increase. Love it or hate it, that’s what it is.” The Enquirer suggests that they will be forced to re-evaluate these goals and I agree. I think it is good to set stretch goals and dream big, but if attaining them is patently impossible, it is time for a rethink. Having said that, there is still plenty of good in Agenda 360, and particularly in the process they used.

The Cleveland Infrastructure Challenge

A couple of news articles out of Cleveland got me thinking again about the infrastructure challenges facing not just that city, but most of our cities. The first was a piece on the recontruction of the Inner Belt bridge. This nine figure project is going to result in six years of construction and traffic disruption.

When you look at expenses like this – and others such as CSO remediation – it shows again the problem that our core cities are forced to spend huge amounts of money just to replace or repair aging infrastructure. When suburban areas build infrastructure, at least they get the benefit of mostly net new product. But after a lot of these expenditures in our cities, they have more or less the same product. Fixing a decaying bank just holds off problems, but doesn’t add to Cleveland’s competitive advantage. Indeed, to the extent that local funds are used, it only adds to the fiscal burden. In my view this is again where federal assistance could help our cities tremendously.

Also, it is critical to find any way we can to get value add out of these projects. Too often instead we get value engineering that strips these down to the bare minimum to save on budget. The end result is a project that doesn’t move the needle for the city or region, but still costs a fortune.

The Asian Invasion

Illinois recently poisoned the Sanitary and Ship Canal in order to kill off Asian carp, and invasive species working its way north from the Mississippi River. There is a huge fear that these voracious eaters would devastate the ecosystem of the Great Lakes if they managed to make it to Lake Michigan.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to force Chicago to close the Chicago River locks to stop it. She’s even threatening legal action. Subsequent press coverage indicated the Army Corps of Engineers is actively considering a temporary closure.

Let’s face it, Chicago would never have been allowed to reverse the flow of the Chicago River today. Other Great Lakes states have long seethed at this arrangement and the threat to the ecosystem is a foot in the door to re-open the issue of whether Chicago can continue to divert billions of gallons of Lake Michigan water. This could get interesting.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

There’s a sort of genre of urbanist creativity out there of fantasy transit maps. These are maps of transit systems that don’t exist and usually aren’t even proposed yet, but rather just express some dream of the creator, often quite epic in scope.

What I find interesting is how much better these often are than actual transit maps or proposals. I noted before how the Cincinnati streetcar people basically don’t even have a decent map of the line. Contrast that with this example that Columbus Underground points us at. If you click the image, you’ll get a high resolution PDF.

Now that’s a pretty slick map. It is, for locals at least, recognizably Columbus. The crisp, modern design, 45 degree angles, and relatively equidistant stations recall the famous London map and others from cities around the world. The idea being to show how Columbus could position itself among these global cities by creating a transit system. You can even buy it as a poster! A nice possible marketing tool.

This map was created by designer Michael Tyznik and is part of his online design portfolio and is reproduced with permission.

People who are pushing actual transit system improvements could learn a lot from these fantasy maps. Coming up with high quality collateral that demonstrates what the end state looks like is important. And if you can make short term progress and update the map to show reality being made, even better. Transit advocates should take note.

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

“The real question is what these expensive, publicly bankrolled behemoths add to their local economies. The consensus across every, single serious study ever done of the economic impact of sports stadia is ‘absolutely nothing.” As the old song goes, ‘say it again.’” – Richard Florida

Every independent study I’ve seen suggests that pro sports and stadiums are a bad deal. But city after city invests in them. If this is so seemingly irrational, why? Some of the arguments include ego, corruption from the influence of rich team owners, the fact that local fat cats will get to enjoy the boxes, etc.

It strikes me, however, that we really ought to take a very different view of pro sports. Rather than seeing this as a direct economic investment with a direct ROI in the way a company models investing in a new plant, we should look at it as a marketing and branding expense. In effect, when cities pay hundreds of millions of dollars to team owners to put a franchise in their town, what they are really buying is naming rights to the team.

Is this rational? I haven’t seen a study that attempts to model it this way, but I think we could evaluate it by comparing what cities pay for naming rights on a team versus what non-public sector actors might pay and comparing the prices on some type of normalized CPM basis. CPM, cost per mille, that is, the cost per thousand impressions, is the way advertising is typically sold in the United States. (Other countries use slightly different albeit conceptually similar models such as cost per gross ratings point). If a city is getting as good a CPM rate as private advertisers or naming rights sponsors, then it could be in at least some sense justified.

Is that standard met? Again, I haven’t run the numbers and don’t have the resources to conduct such a study, but my hypothesis is that cities are getting a very good deal indeed.

Consider the Indianapolis Colts. The city initially paid about $80 million to build the Hoosier Dome, which it used to lure the Colts from Baltimore. But that was in 1984, a different era. To keep the Colts, the city had to build them a new stadium at a cost of $725 million. Plus, the city is foregoing a large chunk of the revenues from the stadium. Let’s assume that when you add up all the lost revenues, factor in interest, etc, you are looking at $1.5 billion over time. That’s just a rough, finger in the wind measure.

Lucas Oil Products, desirous of building a brand for itself, purchased the naming rights on the stadium for $120 million. This is far from the high water mark, by the way. Reliant Energy signed a $300 million deal in Houston.

So Indianapolis paid 12.5x to put its name on the team versus what Lucas Oil paid to put its name on the stadium. This means it needs to draw 12.5 times as many impressions to have paid the same effective rate as a private business that is presumably purely profit motivated. I don’t think it is hard to imagine that the name “Indianapolis” appears or is mentioned on TV with regards to the Colts way more than 12.5 times more than “Lucas Oil Stadium” does.

That puts it in perspective. How much money do advertisers pay to get their names on TV? A 30 second Super Bowl ad is $2.7 million or so. That’s what Budweiser pays to get 30 seconds of air time. But when the Colts were in the Super Bowl, the name “Indianapolis” appeared for a heckuva lot longer than 30 seconds. Think about what you would have to pay the TV networks to put your name on the screen and on the lips of the commentators (even that jerk Chris Collinsworth, who has always hated the Colts) as often as “Indianapolis” appears. The price tag would be staggering.

Beyond just having distinctive names versus a generic one, sports teams and major events are likely the main reason everybody in America knows where you are talking about when you say Indianapolis, Cincinnati, or Cleveland, but “Columbus” does not have the same resonance.

This also helps explain why small cities subsidize sports so much more than big ones. It’s not just about big market vs. small market revenues. Bigger cities aren’t as dependent on pro sports to get their brand message out. That’s why Mayor Daley could afford to take a comparatively tough line with the Bears these things go. There are lots of ways he can market Chicago.

Of course, we can still debate whether or not the investment is wise. Just because the cost is market competitive doesn’t mean you should purchase something. But again, I think about the way companies brand themselves and wonder about the ROI for them too. Think about it. Everyone in America already knows Budweiser and their brand promise intimately. But they still advertise heavily to build the brand, not just for specific promotions. They know they need to stay top of mind with their customer.

My previous employer, which was a business to business concern whose buyers are high end executives, nevertheless spends money on television and outdoor ads. I can’t disclose the amount obviously, but let’s just say it is a lot. Why do this if there is no value? Clearly, when tracking various independent measures of brand equity value, there was a payoff. Also, we built sophisticated modeling tools and utilized a team of math Ph.D’s. to help our clients’ marketing organizations calculate the response curves for various advertising types to help identify the marginal value and optimize outlays for various variables. So while there is still an art to it, there’s a lot of science that could be brought to bear to study this, if indeed someone wanted to do the research.

Now, if you contrast the brand recognition of Indianapolis and Columbus, Indy is far higher. On the other hand, if you compare their demographic and economic performance, they are virtually identical twins despite Indy’s far greater investment in sports. That’s a bit of a cautionary tale. Of course there are a lot of variables involved. That’s why we also shouldn’t be so quick to use some sort of “but for” modeling to claim too many benefits for pro sports – and it is why we needed so many math Ph.D.’s!

From what I’ve seen, a lot of chief marketing officers think they are over-spending on advertising. But clearly there is real value in marketing budgets or highly profit-motivated firms wouldn’t spend so much on it. It strikes me that if you look at pro sports investments and stadiums in this light, there’s a stronger possible rationale for doing them than traditional economic impact analysis would suggest.

If there is a study out there that has modeled pro sports in this way, I’d love to see it.

John B. Judis takes a more centrist track over at The New Republic in his lengthy “End State“. While he grants Time’s assertion that California is a powerhouse in high tech, biotech, and green industries – but notes that jobs in those sectors continue to decline despite output gains.

Detroit Roundup

My piece on Detroit as an urban laboratory and new American frontier is still going crazy out there on the web. I wouldn’t have expected it when I wrote it, but that is now the all time number one article on my site.

Daniel Howes expresses outrage at an interesting Detroit practice. Various groups endorse and support candidates based on how much the candidates donates to them. They fund their PAC’s from candidates.

GOOD Video: Emerging City Innovation

High Speed Rail – A Simple Point to Point Service

The Transport Politic has a great piece up on high speed rail corridor market share in Europe. Eurostar has an 85% market share on the London to Paris market, but for trips involving transfers on either end, market share is only 5%. This prompts the author to ask if direct service is the defining element of high speed rail.

This backs up something I said all along about the proposed Midwest high speed rail network. Namely that we should not view Chicago as the hub in the sense of an airline passenger or package sorting hub, which is all about traffic interchange, but rather as being about a series of point to point corridors driven almost entirely by O&D to and from Chicago. This has important implications:

If each corridor stands alone, then you don’t need to build the full network to get value. Every corridor you build brings value in its own right. On the flip side, so-called network benefits may not be large as the system is built out.

It is not necessary to have a single high speed rail terminal in Chicago. Rather, let each line use its own logic terminal station. This is important because the logical corridor is the IC/Metra Electric for all trains from the south and southeast (St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville). Rather than Union Station, you could have a station at Van Buren St. or Millennium Station.

The Economic Development Potential of African American Men

Rust Wire pointed us at a study by an organization I’d never heard of called Policy Bridge on African American men in Northeast Ohio. I haven’t read the entire thing in detail yet, but Rust Wire’s take looked interesting and the abstract hit a lot of the points I’ve pounded again and again on this blog:

The loss of African-American male potential is, in fact, a loss of income that is crippling the regional and state economies. Creating economic opportunity for African-American men is, in fact, creating opportunity for Greater Cleveland. By investing in better educating, fully employing, and fairly compensating the African-American male population, the area is investing in its own well-being. The return on investment will come in the form of increased consumer buying power, increased income and property taxes, increased civic engagement, and renewed economic growth.

Before this reward can be realized, however, the community must undergo a change in viewpoint: The African-American male population must no longer be seen as a potential drain on community resources, but as an untapped well of economic potential and a key ingredient to Northeast Ohio’s economic recovery.

Sad Transit Chart From Cleveland

Columbus to Use Conservation Easement to Preserve City Center Site

I previously reported that Columbus wanted to scrape the City Center Mall site and put a park there. I said this might not be a bad temporary use of the land, but that they would be unlikely to create the type of civic gathering place they hoped for. Well, not only is the city moving forward with the park plan, they also want to use a conservation easement to try to make sure it stays a park forever.

This would be a mistake. Not only will this park again likely not achieve the goals set out for it, one legislative body has no right to try to bind what future legislative bodies can do with that land. The world belongs in usufruct to the living. Just as the policies of the past – including many pernicious practices – don’t and should not control us today, we have no right to tell future generations how they ought to run their city.

Featured Site: American Dirt

I’ve linked to the relatively new blog American Dirt before, but wanted to highlight it again. The blog is written by a landscape architect in Indianapolis who takes a look at public spaces and the design of our cities in a critical and super-in depth way. He just started a major series on the City Market. This guy writes as long as I do on occasion – and that’s saying something – but it is excellent stuff. I actually have him on my National Blogroll because what he writes about is very relevant nationally and not everything is about Indy – he’s done pieces on many other cities. Suggested starting points:

The Urban State of Mind: Meditations on the City is the first Urbanophile e-book, featuring provocative essays on the key issues facing our cities, including innovation, talent attraction and brain drain, global soft power, sustainability, economic development, and localism. Included are 28 carefully curated essays out of nearly 1,200 posts in the first seven years of the Urbanophile, plus 9 original pieces. It's great for anyone who cares about our cities.

About the Urbanophile

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities thrive and find sustainable success in the 21st century.